1. Field
This invention relates to multi-core voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs), and more specifically, to coupling and mismatch in the power/ground trace routing of the multi-core VCOs.
2. Background
Recent developments in wireless communication technology have allowed an entire radio frequency (RF) transceiver to be implemented on a single semiconductor chip. However, integrating the RF transceiver on a single chip presents a number of challenges. For example, a single-chip solution may require at least two voltage-controlled oscillators (VCOs) to be running on the chip at the same time. Such a configuration may produce undesired interaction between the cores of the VCOs due to various types of mutual coupling mechanisms, which may result in spurious receiver responses and unwanted frequencies in the transmit spectrum. The primary mutual coupling mechanism is the electromagnetic (EM) coupling between the inductors and/or capacitors of the resonators.